FLORIDA, U.S. (352today.com) – It’s been a minute since we last got an interesting report from personal finance website WalletHub that put the Sunshine State in the spotlight, but that drought, at least has ended with a new study that calls Florida the fourth most diverse state in the nation.
To get their findings, the folks at WalletHub looked at diversity in all 50 states across six metrics:
- socio-economic diversity
- cultural diversity
- economic diversity
- household diversity
- religious diversity
- political diversity
The breadth of research across these metrics allowed the study to dig deeper than simple, clear-cut areas of diversity such as ethnicity and gender.
“Race and gender are probably the first things that come to mind when people think about diversity, but there’s plenty more that makes this nation diverse,” said analyst Chip Lupo in an announcement about the study. “The most diverse states have above-average variety when it comes to people’s ages, birthplaces, languages, jobs, family structures and more.”
Some of the areas in which Florida stood out include high birthplace diversity (obviously), generational diversity (again, obvs) and marital-status diversity (it’s complicated); our state didn’t rank below average in any of the criteria, but did sink into average scores for religious and household-size diversity.
The three states that WalletHub found to be more diverse in Florida are, in descending order, California, Texas, and New Mexico. The least diverse state in the United States? West Virginia, followed by Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Montana.